This invention relates to a point of sale system for receiving information relating to sales transactions and for accepting money and dispensing change for each sales transaction without requiring an operator to touch any money.
In the past, there have been provided pilfer-proof automatic cash registers into which either an attendant or a customer deposits money paid for a sales transaction and from which money is dispensed as change. Such cash registers are arranged to eliminate the need for a cash drawer, and are automatically controlled to accept money into a cache and dispense change due from the cache.
Previous automatic cash registers have a number of disadvantages. Some lack the capability of quickly and easily calculating the amount due, receiving bills of different denominations in payment of the amount due, paying out bills of different denominations as change, and providing useful audit information. Some cash registers do not provide fail-safe features for isolating one sales transaction from another or for preventing tampering with the system. Other cash registers contain complex and expensive subsystems having optical means for verifying the genuineness of bills paid by the customer. Many automatic cash registers have controls which are complicated or cumbersome for the customer to use and therefore are not suitable for use in high volume sales transactions. Many business establishments sell a number of high volume items as well as a number of low volume items. Previous keyboard operated automatic cash registers lack simplified keyboard controls with which the operator can actuate keys for quickly and easily calculating the amount of a sales transaction involving both high volume and low volume items.
The present invention provides an automatic cash register which overcomes all of the disadvantages described above.